2015 in glimpses

Past Due Praise Songs

We meant to solarize the garden. We meant to spread the bag of mulch that is now split open and disintegrating into soil. We meant to plant the trumpet vine that with all the rain it didn’t get might have climbed the fence and burst into bloom. Oh, intentions. Oh, grand ideas. I meant to write 30 praise songs for the month of April, to sing and sing about the large and the small, about my life and other lives. Instead the month hit me with a headache that lasted for weeks, with doctors’ visits and house guests — each worthy of its own praise song — and the poetry contest that wouldn’t quit. We meant to keep water in the birdbath so that the fat pigeon that alighted this morning would have something to drink. Instead it investigated and flew away. Spring, my favorite season, came on headstrong and insistent this year, rain and sun and everything racing to outpace each other. My head said slow. My head said calm. And it kept coming — the garden and the birdbath and the songs I didn’t find the time to sing.